Report On The Threatened City Quotes

In white neighborhoods, only 1 in 41 properties that could have received a nuisance citation actually did receive one. In black neighborhoods, 1 in 16 eligible properties received a citation. A woman reporting domestic violence was far more likely to land her landlord a nuisance citation if she lived in the inner city. In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them.

He had been living in a down-town Y.M.C.A., but when he quit the task of making sow-ear purses out of sows' ears, he moved up-town and went to work immediately as a reporter for The Sun. He kept at this for a year, doing desultory writing on the side, with little success, and then one day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career. On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the horses' hoofs in the snow… This he handed in. Next morning a marked copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note: "Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen the snow threatening—had postponed the parade until another day. A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover."… In

From Flood, Flash, and Pheromones--coming soon: In the torrential downpour with water swirling that threatened to pull her down, she didn’t see the voice’s owner. The hurricane had blessed the entire city with a surprise drenching. All weather reports had predicted it to pass over with sporadic rainfall but that didn’t happen. The storm settled over Houston as if it had no intention to move on. Cassie flailed in panic as the roof of her car disappeared under the water twenty feet beyond. She prayed once more that the container in it was watertight. And that she’d see her car again. Then she concentrated on living. Where had the voice come from?

On August 3, 2012, the fifteenth day of the government offensive, rebels in the city said they were desperately low on ammunition and expressed dismay that the international community had not reacted when a huge massacre could be coming. Again, Libya was the example. Gadhafi threatened to overrun Benghazi and when he tried to do it, NATO started bombing. Now in Syria, Assad was threatening to crush the opposition in Aleppo and had already started doing it, but Washington’s reaction was only hand-wringing. In my conversations with rebels it was clear they were becoming increasingly disheartened and desperate. (The rebels would usually communicate with each other on Skype, blending in with the billions of people using the Internet instead of going through cell-phone towers.) The United States was apparently still skittish about sending in arms because it feared they would end up in the hands of Islamic extremists, but that, like so many unintended consequences of US foreign policy in the Middle East, was a self-fulfilling prophecy. At this stage the rebels were numerous, strong, motivated, and moderate and I made that clear in my reports on the air.

Ferguson, Missouri. When riots broke out over the August shooting death of Michael Brown, armed members of the Oath Keepers took to the city’s rooftops, appearing out of the smoke and shattered glass of ransacked buildings. Their supposed duty was to secure the local businesses from looting. In the first days of the protests, demonstrators had broken out windows of storefronts, set arson fires, and torched a beauty supply store. ABC News reported that a number of business owners embraced the Oath Keepers’ armed presence. Group members boarded up storefronts and kept buckets of water and fire extinguishers handy in case nearby arson attacks escalated. This was the vigilante group’s moment in the media sun. Still, rumors flew. Some protestors thought the armed men in camouflaged fatigues were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The St. Louis County police ordered the Oath Keepers to leave the rooftops of Ferguson, threatening them with arrest for acting as a security force without a license. This only added fuel to the right-wing group’s conspiracy that the government is not protecting its people. The volunteer security force packed up and left Ferguson, leaving people wondering exactly who these heavily armed mystery men were.

In March, Koch threatened to stop Westway if the state did not provide funding to protect the fare at the same time that it passed an MTA capital program. That was not an idle threat, since federal officials did not want to be caught in the middle of a local battle. The US Department of Transportation had clearly stated that federal funds for Westway would be awarded only if both state and city officials agreed that it should be built. In response, the governor told reporters that Westway would be built and that he was not planning on meeting with the mayor to discuss the issue. He said, “If the mayor wants to come to a meeting, tell him to bring money.” Deputy Mayor Bobby Wagner pointed out that “traditionally the politics of mass transit brings out the worst in public officials.”60

His brother Najib owned an auto-parts store at bustling Shikarpur Gate, the mouth of the narrow road linking their village to the city—an ancient byway that had once led southward through the passes all the way to India. At dusk it is clogged with a riot of vegetable sellers’ handcarts beset by shoppers, Toyota pickup trucks, horse-drawn taxis, and three-wheeled rickshaws clambering around and through the throng like gaudy dung beetles. Nurallah’s brother Najib had gone to Chaman, just across the border in Pakistan, where the streets are lined with cargo containers serving as shops, and used motor oil cements the dust to the ground in a glossy tarmac, and every variety of automotive organ or sinew is laid bare, spread out, and strung up for sale. He had made his purchases and set off back to Kandahar. “He paid his customs dues”—Nurallah emphasized the remarkable point—“because that’s the law. He paid at every checkpoint on the way back, fifty afghanis, a hundred afghanis.” A dollar or two every time an unkempt, underage police boy in green fatigues slouched out of a sandbagged lean-to into the middle of the road—eight times in the sixty-six miles when last I counted. “And then when he reached the entrance to town, the police there wanted five hundred afghanis. Five hundred!” A double arch marks the place where the road that swoops down from Kabul joins the road leading in from Pakistan. The police range from one side to the other, like spear fishermen hunting trout in a narrows. “He refused,” Nurallah continued. “He said he had paid his customs dues—he showed them the receipt. He said he had paid the bribes at every checkpoint all along the way, and he was not paying again.” I waited a beat. “So what happened?” “They reached into his window and smacked him.” “They hit him?” I was shocked. Najib might be a sunny guy, but Kandahar tempers are strung on tripwires. For a second I thought we’d have to go bail him out. “What did he do?” Nurallah’s eyes, beneath his widow’s peak, were banked and smoldering. “What could he do? He paid the money. But then he pulled over to the side of the road and called me. I told him to stay right there. And I called Police Chief Matiullah Qatih, to report the officer who was taking the bribes.” And Matiullah had scoffed at him: Did he die of it? The police buzzards had seen Najib make the call. They had descended on him, snatched the phone out of his hand, and smashed it. “You call that law?” Now Nurallah was ablaze. “They’re the police! They should be showing people what the law is; they should be enforcing the law. And they’re the ones breaking it.” Nurallah was once a police officer himself. He left the force the day his own boss, Kabul police chief Zabit Akrem, was assassinated in that blast in the mosque in 2005.1 Yet so stout was Nurallah’s pride in his former profession that he brought his dark green uniform into work and kept it there, hung neatly on a hook in his locker. “My sacred oath,” he vowed, concluding: “If I see someone planting an IED on a road, and then I see a police truck coming, I will turn away. I will not warn them.” I caught my breath. So maybe he didn’t mean it literally. Maybe Nurallah wouldn’t actually connive with the Taliban. Still, if a former police officer like him was even mouthing such thoughts, then others were acting on them. Afghan government corruption was manufacturing Taliban.

What do I think about my neighbors? These people. These people who have sprayed the word nigger on my door. These people who finally threatened my children. My children did you hear me? Have you ever held a child in your arms while she shook her insides out? She was so scared I cried her to sleep. How do you ever tell a child again that she's safe? Huh? What do I think of these people? Huh? What should anyone think? What should you reporters think? What should the city think? What should the mayor think? What should the country think?

VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DISRUPTING DETENTION According to a report from Lady Cadence, Keefe and Sophie Foster were repeatedly caught talking during detention and earned extra punishment. 2 out of 10 One additional detention assigned. I’m not a fan of Lady Cadence’s attitude toward her position as a Foxfire Mentor. But she’s volunteered to supervise the majority of the year’s detentions. And given the punishments she’s planning (I hear today’s involved curdleroots!), I think she may be able to curtail Keefe’s behavior. —Dame Alina VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DISRUPTING STUDY HALL According to a report from Sir Rosings, Keefe was talking to Sophie Foster and Dex Dizznee—and when Sir Rosings warned them to stop, Keefe threatened to fill Sir Rosings’s desk with sparkly poop. Punishment was assigned to all three prodigies. 2 out of 10 One additional detention assigned. I suppose I should be concerned about how many detentions Keefe has accrued in his first week of sessions. But… I can’t bring myself to care. I think something is going on with Alden Vacker. His children have been absent all week and there was some sort of commotion at the Opening Ceremonies. But every time I’ve asked the Council for information, they’ve denied my request. —Dame Alina

In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them. ... [A landlord] wrote: “First, we are evicting Sheila M, the caller for help from police. She has been beaten by her ‘man’ who kicks in doors and goes to jail for 1 or 2 days. We suggested she obtain a gun and kill him in self defense, but evidently she hasn’t. Therefore, we are evicting her.” Each of these landlords received the same form letter from the Milwaukee PD: “This notice “serves to inform you that your written course of action is accepted.” The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. After the numbers were released, Milwaukee’s chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief’s views: “He believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future.” What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department’s own rules presented battered women with a devil’s bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.

While all this was occurring, elsewhere about the Republic celebrators of the Fourth suffered shattered fingers, wounded heads, and blinded eyes from excessive use of fireworks. In New York City, eighty-eight conflagrations were started by fireworks. In Montgomery, Alabama, the first Confederate capital, thirteen guns were fired in salute to the reunited nation; in Richmond, Virginia, the second Confederate capital, flags of the United States and Virginia were hoisted together for the first time since 1860. In New Orleans, parades and rhetorical exercises honored the day, but in Charleston, South Carolina, only the Negroes celebrated. An attempt was made in Oronogo, Missouri, to raise the Confederate flag, but an opposing party gathered and threatened to shoot the perpetrators of the deed. In Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, the Confederate flag and a banner bearing the names of the Democratic party’s candidates for President and Vice-President, Tilden and Hendricks, were suspended from the dome of the county courthouse. In Wyoming, ranchers heard rumors from friendly Indians that General Custer had suffered a great defeat north of Powder River, but none believed the story. Late in the day, a Helena, Montana, newspaper received a brief dispatch dated July 2 from Stillwater: “Muggins Taylor, a scout from General Gibbon, arrived here last night from Little Horn River and reports that Gen. Custer found the Indian camp of 2,000 lodges on the Little Horn and immediately attacked it. He charged the thickest portion of the camp with five companies … The Indians poured a murderous fire from all directions, Gen. Custer, his two brothers, his nephew, and brother-in-law were all killed, and not one of the detachment escaped.

We have concluded that the young are in a state of disabling despair. While more clear-minded, in some ways, than their elders—that is, more able to voice and maintain criticism of wrongs and faults—they are not able to believe in their own effectiveness.

The few journalists attempting to report on the atomic cities in the weeks immediately following the bombings were threatened with expulsion from Japan, harassed by U.S. officials, and accused of spreading Japanese propaganda…

Despite a protective Geyer threatening to “break the neck of the first reporter who attempted to interview the woman,” a determined reporter caught Mrs. Pitezel on her way out of the Rossin House dining room.

Col. James N. Rowe, a United States Army officer who spent five years as a prisoner in Vietnam before escaping in 1968, was shot to death yesterday (April 21, 1989) by gunmen near Manila, where he was a military adviser to the Philippine armed forces. He was 51 years old. Colonel Rowe was being driven to work at the Joint United States Military Advisory Group headquarters in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, shortly after 7 A.M. when at least two hooded gunmen in a stolen car fired more than 20 bullets into his vehicle. His driver, Joaquin Vinua, was wounded but was reported out of danger. Colonel Rowe was pronounced dead at a nearby military hospital. Communist Rebels Suspected No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Philippine officials said they believed the killers were Communist rebels. The rebels have threatened to attack American targets unless the United States closes its military bases in the Philippines and ends its support of the Philippine military's fight against the insurgency.

Every day, China experiences riots and mass social unrest that never makes it into international news. There’s not enough work in the cities and the peasants who return to the country are starving to death. In some desperate, lawless areas, reports of occultism and even cannibalism are starting to leak out. As conditions deteriorate, China, like North Korea, has become a hotbed of new, drug-resistant diseases that threaten the entire world. About which they routinely lie to WHO and other international health organizations

Obstetricians working in inner-city hospitals report that black mothers have higher rates of complications during pregnancy and in delivery because of higher rates of morbid obesity, hypertension, and inattention to prenatal care and prenatal-care appointments. Packing those doctors off to diversity reeducation will not improve black childbirth outcomes.